On Thursday, April 16th, at 6pm in the Stevenson Library, poets Kevin Young and Evie Shockley will come together for a reading and conversation on writing and poetry in times of crisis. This event will launch the Black Poetry Day Collection in the Stevenson Library. All are welcome to attend.

Poet and literary scholar Evie Shockley thinks, creates and writes with her eye on a Black feminist horizon. Her books of poetry include suddenly we, semiautomatic and the new black. Her work has twice garnered the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and appeared internationally. Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Holmes National Poetry Prize and the Stephen Henderson Award. Her joys include participating in poetry communities such as Cave Canem and collaborating with like-minded artists working in various media. Shockley is the Zora Neale Hurston Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University.

Kevin Young is an American poet and the former director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory’s Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of The New Yorker.

The Black Poetry Day Collection was donated to Bard in 2023 by retired Director of the Plattsburgh Public Library Stanley Ransom and his wife, Christina Palhof Ransom (Bard alum ‘73). The collection includes autographed copies of books by each of the poets honored at Black Poetry Day at SUNY Plattsburgh from 1970 to the present.

This event is co-sponsored by the Stevenson Library at Bard College, Ellison Center, and Office of the Dean of Inclusive Excellence, and Written Arts Program.